MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- Google's reboot of its Google TV over-the-top product aims to bring changes to the service that will help it win traction with consumers.
The product has stumbled from the gate, dating back to its 2010 release, but the Web giant is gearing up to roll out a new iteration with new manufacturing partners this year. We caught up with Shanna Preve, business development manager Google TV to learn about what's ahead.
Google TV's newest TV set partners include LG, Vizio and Samsung. "We are working with them to bring the content experience to these devices," she says.
Google TV is also aiming to expand the app marketplace. There are currently 150 apps optimized for Google TV and the company wants to grow that along the same trajectory as its Android marketplace for phones, which now counts more than 450,000 apps.
One of the biggest goals since the 2010 launch was to make the service easier to use, Preve says. As such, Google focused on four changes -- making the user interface more intuitive, improving the user experience, bring apps to Google TV and incorporating content discovery. "You can now easily find TV shows and movies," Preve explains.
She adds that apps are proving popular and the three of the most-used ones are YouTube, Netflix and Google TV's own TV and Movie App to help users find the programs they want to see. That's been the biggest goal of the revamped product -- to help consumers better find the shows they want to see and to also expose them to new shows, be they via Amazon, Netflix, or the cable service, that they might not have known about before, Preve says.
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I'm surprised that the app community hasn't become more active with some of the announcements, bit of hype lately. It's a pretty underutilized product from my perspective-very few of the apps allow you to use them while using the TV at the same time. Only one app shows real-time twitter updates-I thought that would be a big part of the experience for instance.